


there's no comfort in responsibility

by godtrashed



Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Angry Phone Sex, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, M/M, Not A Fix-It, Post-Incident, complicated feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 20:38:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14723196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/godtrashed/pseuds/godtrashed
Summary: He gets out of bed the morning after, like he always does. Maybe this has been the wake-up call he’s needed for a while. He’s thirty. He’s an adult now, a professional, respected in his field. It’s long past time to put away childish things.(Griffin's really, catastrophically bad at moving on.)





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> idk if there'll be a whole heap of readers for this, but it was amazingly cathartic for me to write, and. well. i guess if you read it i hope it is a little bit restorative for you, too. either way, the dead dove warning in the tags is all the way in effect. thanks to masin, a good egg, for reading and encouraging and generally being great; thanks to car seat headrest for the title.

It comes and goes. There are weeks -- months, sometimes -- where he doesn’t think about any of it, which he figures is a sign that the worst of the mourning is over. What gets him, when it gets him, isn’t Nick; it’s himself, the way he gets when he’s streaming or recording and the whole thing starts threatening to career off the rails. It’s a reflex he thought he’d aged out of, some bullshit hangover from high school or from college. The kind of guardedness that kept him in his house back in Ohio, careful enough (anxious enough) that all of Travis’s efforts couldn’t coax him outside.

So it _is_ Nick, kind of. It is and it isn’t. Not a week goes by when he doesn’t find himself apologising to Russ when they get offline after Awful Squad, once people aren’t watching anymore. It’s almost worse that everyone keeps forgiving him, keeps _understanding._

There are messages still on his phone that he can’t bring himself to delete -- a full week’s worth of words, mistyped in a hurry or fumbled out with shaking hands. Most of them aren’t his. He doesn’t revisit them, except when he does, and ends up scrolling past them and all the way back to 2015. He looks up and it’s 2am. He looks up and he’s alone. He looks up and the words don’t mean what they meant back then; they barely mean anything. They’re someone else’s story. They could have happened to anyone.

He gets out of bed the morning after, like he always does. Maybe this has been the wake-up call he’s needed for a while. He’s thirty. He’s an adult now, a professional, respected in his field. It’s long past time to put away childish things. He clocks in for the weekly team meetings, keeps Jenna and Brian at a safe, respectable arm’s length. He cuts all the way back on Twitter, which has never exactly been great for his mental health. It’s fine when he doesn’t think too hard about it. He knows, _obviously_ he knows that’s dumb; conditionally-fine isn’t anything, sitting on the bad shit never worked for anyone, but what else is there to do? He’s so fucking visible. Everyone watching is so desperate for any new information that his eyelid could twitch and they’d spin it up into evidence. He can sustain this, he tells himself, until they all forget. He tells himself that they’ll forget. On good days, he can tell himself that he’ll forget, too.

“Oh,” says Travis, quick and unconvincing at the end of a recording call, “I was gonna tell you, Ditto, I took Coolgames Inc off the website -- I was putting up the west coast live shows and I thought I’d clean house.” Justin says nothing. Justin listens, and waits to hear whatever he hears in Griffin’s eventual reply.

“Sure,” says Griffin, and digs his fingernails into his palms. There isn’t a word for the ache in his chest, the raw-edged blank inside him where he ripped out something he loved. _Cleaning house_ doesn’t come close. “Cool. Thanks, Travis” -- and that’s all. That’s all there is.

…

He doesn’t see the message until he’s done with work for the day. There are two kinds of social media anxiety, Griffin has learned: the one where you can’t look, and the one where you can’t look away. What if something goes wrong? It’s the knife-edge line between knowledge-is-power and ignorance-is-bliss. Either way, dread occupies his lungs like dry rot, poisoning every breath he takes. At least if he shuts his phone in his bedroom while he’s working, he actually -- well, _works_.

He doesn’t have plans for the night. Watch a movie, maybe; curl up on the couch with Cecil. Pat got real excited for the new _Pacific Rim._ It’d be something to talk about, next time they stream something together. When he picks up his phone again, it’s idle, thoughtless in a way he is trying not to be. It’s one of very few constants in his life: looking back at the man he was a year ago, rolling his eyes, thinking _this dipshit_ and resolving anew to try harder. 

Three new messages blink into life on the screen. One’s from Justin, checking when he’s needed for Jackbox at the weekend; one’s from his dad, who apparently got sent some hand-painted D&D miniatures in the mail. The third message is a reminder. _Suck Nick’s dick,_ eyes emoji, eggplant emoji. Three hours ago. The phone shakes in his hands; his hands shake around the phone. He doesn’t remember. He didn’t set that reminder. Heat rises in him like vomit, up from his gut to the back of his neck. It’s like seeing a ghost, watching it smash his fucking dishes on the floor, silent and methodical and unrelenting.

Griffin sits on the edge of the bed, and opens up the reminder. 

It’s from 2016. It’s from a Thursday. It’s from a Thursday in 2016, when he and Nick were recording Coolgames Inc together -- when he and Nick were goofing off, setting dumb reminders on one another’s phones. He didn’t remember this one. Maybe they cut it from the episode in the end; it tracks, it’s something he would have asked for even then. All those people, listening along. Bad enough that he’d never live down all the sex noises. Most of the reminders they set, he remembers; there was a flurry of dumb reminder notifications maybe a month after the recording. But this -- but this. He exhales slow and shaken, curls the fingers of one hand in his hair. It’s so stupid. Such a dumb thing to freak out about, this pointless fucking bit from a podcast they killed. He’s Griffin fucking McElroy and he’s so much better than this.

Griffin sits on the edge of the bed. Griffin thinks of plates and glasses shattered and sparkling on the ground, the wreckage of a life still untouchably sharp at the edges, and tries to remember how to breathe.

That ought to be the end of it. He stays up late, staring into the blue light of his monitor, writing for the Adventure Zone. If his note-taking for Balance was extensive, then it pales in comparison to Amnesty; he’s hammered out a plan for at least the next five episodes by the time he crashes out for the night. It accounts for everything. It won’t, inevitably. One of them, somehow, will find a way to fuck with his planning and hijack the story -- but the more he writes, the more he feels like they’ll struggle to find a way in. 

He sleeps like the dead. He wakes like the dead, too, up with his first alarm and into the kitchen for all the coffee he can stomach. No sound but the soft, insistent whirring of the refrigerator. Cecil does his level best to trip him as he goes.

A day passes. Then another. He records some gameplay with Russ, manages to catch himself every time he starts to get too twitchy. Pat and Brian’s No More Heroes stream goes out from New York in the afternoon, and he gives himself an hour just to watch it and not think too hard. He doesn’t check Twitter. Travis texts a photo of baby Bebe staring serious and intent at a book she clearly can’t read. An ache of affection is still an ache, an impulse toward something missing. _The smartest baby in the world,_ he sends back, and loses himself in Monster Hunter until well after midnight.

It isn’t the end. He opens Twitter the next morning, bleary-eyed and semi-conscious, and the first thing he sees -- _Patrick Gill liked this,_ because of fucking course he would -- is Nick. 

Not quite awake, he pieces the image together in fragments: he’s posing in front of a mirror, phone cradled carefully in the fingers of one hand. The camera is trying to catch his eye but it never quite finds him, can’t quite pin him down; there’s a softness, a lack of focus, that stops Griffin’s heart. His dark hair is messy, slept-on; his lips are parted just a little, like he can’t quite pin himself down, either. He looks tired. He looks like something from another world. He’s wearing a shirt that reads _My Brother, My Brother and Me._

His body turns itself inside out. It’s like being annihilated and remade in the span of a second, the inescapable rush of -- anger? It’s not only anger; it can’t be. All he knows is that it’s something, shatteringly intense, almost impossible to contain. The bedsheets are too hot on his skin. All at once he can feel every thread on his pillowcase, every crease in his fitted sheet. Nick did this on purpose. The thought occupies him entirely, light blazing through a filament. He knows, and he’s doing it deliberately, because there’s nothing else in the world that makes sense.

Slow, steady, he locks his phone, sets it aside. He is better than this. He puts on a pot of coffee, puts out food for Cecil. He isn’t even the injured party here. He takes a long, searingly hot shower, scours himself clean in the pressure and the heat. It’s all in his head, and he doesn’t have to feel it. It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s just Nick being an asshole, same as it ever was, and Griffin being dumb enough to be taken by surprise.

He’s recording something for Brian today. He dresses in layers enough that he feels put-together, holds his own gaze in the mirror until it hurts. When he can’t see even a suggestion on his face that something might be wrong, he heads to the office, and he rigs up the camera at his desk.

…

The problem is that it’s playing on his mind. If it were anyone else, he wouldn’t be on Twitter while he’s meant to be working; if it were anyone else, he’d be grieving but healing, starting to find his way back to himself. As it is, he finds his way to Nick’s Twitter feed instead. He doesn’t remember what prompted him to look. It’s been a long, frustrating day, writing and composing and trying not to throw either of the keyboards involved out of the window. There’s a lingering itch of anxiety under his skin, a hangover from the photo and the reminder; if he doesn’t know what’s going on, then how can he prepare? It makes sense to check. There are so many excuses he could make for himself, if anyone ever found out.

What time is it in California? Nick tweeted maybe half an hour ago -- just a SoundCloud link, no context but the title. _arms outstretched 8bit chiptune mix._ The cover art is a reworking of the Adventure Zone podcast art -- three little dudes, a fighter and a wizard and a cleric, picked out in 8bit colour against black.

There’s a long moment of emptiness before his body catches up to his brain. Nick didn’t even tag him. He knows, he _knows_ it’s impossible that Nick predicted he’d look.

All the blood in his body rushes up to his head, knocks him off-balance and leaves him reeling. He doesn’t have to listen to it. Nobody’s making him. He came here all by himself, and it’s his own stupid fault for not understanding the risks.

GarageBand’s still open in the background, the half-finished skeleton of a new track arrayed across his workspace. If it isn’t done by Thursday then the episode will be late, and he’ll have to apologise for it; he can’t shake the thought of Nick’s eyes on him, on his phone screen in bed, quietly taking credit for Griffin’s public failure. Maybe the thoughts are the problem here. He shuts his eyes a moment, watches the ghosts of things he’s seen as they distort on the insides of his eyelids. His whole body hurts with fear. There’s too much that he doesn’t know, too many possibilities waiting to trip him up.

When he clicks the link, he doesn’t let himself think too hard.

It starts slow, the chiptune lending a deceptive brightness to a track he wrote for something momentous. Griffin shuts his eyes again, lets the sound of it wash over him, lets it build and build and break apart into fragments around -- _oh_ \-- a synth line that hasn’t changed at all. All that’s shifted is its context, and isn’t that what a remix is, really? Just enough change to make the familiar feel new. When it fades out to silence, he plays it again -- louder, this time, though it’s getting late enough that it’s not a good idea. Fuck good ideas. He can’t remember the last time he had one, anyway.

Nick listened to this. Did he think about Griffin? There’s no way he didn’t. He’s not even sure if Nick listened to Balance; it never was really his scene. He didn’t fuck with fantasy. The only thing he knew about the track was Griffin, texting him at erratic late-night intervals between audio edits on the episode. It’s the only reason he could have to give a shit.

They never went past flirting, and even that was kind of a bit; people ate it up, their weird back and forth, the easy rhythm they found with each other. There were so many people watching. Nick had a girlfriend, and then another, and Griffin never thought to ask how open those relationships might be; there are so many questions, with hindsight, that he should have asked and didn’t. But then again, what would he have said? They were coworkers. Strictly speaking, Griffin was Nick’s senior. The conversation could never have gone anywhere but south. The synth hits him like a blow, twisting every stupid sinew in his heart. Nick sat in his apartment listening to this, thinking about Griffin. There’s a lump in his throat, an awful empty space in his chest; there’s so much missing that he used to love, and it’s never coming back. The music fades. Griffin blinks hard, eyes stinging. He doesn’t hit play a third time.

Nick knew what he was doing. He wanted this -- he wanted Griffin to miss him. He shuts his eyes, and he leans on the thought until the grief shifts back from depression into anger; he lets it burn through him like acid, corroding his muscles and bones until there’s nothing left in him to hurt. Obviously it was just manipulation. More of the same, and he fell for it. His fingernails bite into his palms. He fell for it, because Nick tipped the balance. Nick _cheated_.

He doesn’t get any calmer. He moves through the process of making dinner, eating dinner, washing the dishes while his hands ache down to their bones with fury. He has to _do_ something. It’s not fair that he should have to deal with this bullshit, on top of all the other bullshit, on top of his actual life. It’s fucking miserable, knowing that Nick can just _do_ this shit -- just prod and prod and prod at him, over and over, a neverending siren of _look at me._ What’s Griffin supposed to do? Ignore him and keep putting up with his shit? Retaliate and give him what he wants? There are so many people watching him. He puts out food for Cecil, almost loud enough with the scooper and the dishes to startle him away. He’s backed right into a corner, and the fact that he’s thinking about it at all means he’s pinned there, no way out.

He manages about five more minutes at his computer, teeth grinding down to dust the whole time. It’s not such a momentous thing, in the end. He just releases the mouse, cracks his neck from side to side, and picks up his phone.

This deep in, his anger just makes him methodical. He screenshots everything, quick and neat, and attaches the results to a message one by one. The reminder, the selfie, the tweet. _This is deliberate,_ he types, pauses, adds _you asshole_ for good measure. He hits send. His heartbeat is in his throat, in his fingertips, right under his skin. Anticipation devours him. This _is_ deliberate; there’s no way he won’t get a reply.

It comes faster than he expected. _what’s deliberate?_ asks Nick, and Griffin can _hear_ him say it. _what do you mean?_ Of course that’s his angle. He thinks back to a thousand recording sessions, Nick one hundred per cent deadpan while saying the filthiest shit, never owning it, never conceding that he knew what he was doing. It shouldn’t have surprised him when he got the news. He’d spent more than a year watching Nick, collaborating with him; he should have guessed where he’d honed his technique.

Anger feels the way he imagines a defibrillator might -- white-hot and electric, dragging him back into his body for the first time in months. There’s no escaping it. He feels alive; he feels like someone turned on the floodlights on a maze he’s been navigating by starlight. _Cute,_ he types. _Try harder._ And he puts his phone down on the desk. There’s something righteous in the finality of it; it’s a world away from that panicked flurry of texts from Nick, slowly slipping into incoherence before stopping altogether. Maybe that was the problem all along. Backreading Twitter on a Friday morning, the world falling away beneath his feet, didn’t feel anything like an ending should.

His phone vibrates, shudders incrementally closer to the edge of the desk. Griffin’s heart lurches out of rhythm, like he’s missed a step on the stairs.

The world has closed in around him; it’s just him and the phone, just him and Nick. He reaches for it, picks it up, swipes open the message. His breath stutters and stalls in his lungs. It’s not a message, exactly. It’s just a picture. It’s a picture of Nick, standing in front of a mirror, eyes cropped out but mouth half-open in the frame. He is _absolutely_ not wearing a shirt. The photo cuts off just below his navel, before the sharp lines of his hipbones can reach their destination, but that’s not the point. The point is -- he can’t find the point. Nick’s mouth demands to be kissed.

His throat feels like Nick has his hands around it, squeezing. There isn’t enough air in the office, or in the world. Griffin shouldn’t even be looking at this; it’s not _for_ him, not really. It’s for the sake of Nick’s ego, or his insatiable need for attention, and it _hurts_ to think words like _insatiable_ when Nick’s chest and hips and perfect fucking skin are right there on the screen in front of him. Dark hair trailing downwards; the five-o’clock shadow at his jawline. His thoughts are a terrible, gaping pit, getting wider every second, and he’s not even sure he wants to keep from falling in.

 _That’s not what I meant,_ he types, and sends it. Too slow. Nick has to know he was looking.

The ellipses only appear for a moment. _wasn’t it?_ asks Nick, and all Griffin can hear is Nick’s voice, Nick’s intonation. Familiarity like a knife in the heart. _come on. give me your best._

Griffin hesitates. His nerves are on fire, all lit up like highways in the dark. He’s so full, all at once, overflowing with every feeling that abandoned him last summer -- all the things he felt before, twisted ninety degrees and turned up past the highest volume. The levels are all fucked up. It doesn’t matter. He’s _real_ again; his heart and his gut have caught and outpaced his mind. He doesn’t hesitate for long.

 _Why should I?_ His hands are steady. It’s such a strange kind of certainty, half adrenaline and half rage. _Clearly you don’t think I’m worth YOUR best. At least do me better than that._

And he puts his phone down on the desk once more. He breathes in deep, lets it go. The air tastes like spring, like sunscreen and dust in his mouth. When he hears it, that telltale buzz of aluminium on wood, he doesn’t hurry. He doesn’t have to. He knows what they’re doing, what they’ve done.


	2. 2

“Don’t bullshit me,” he says, voice low, into the dark. His phone is on the pillow, close enough to pick up every word he says; the screen lit up with an old photograph, but it tells him nothing, not really. It’s all in what he hears. Thousands of miles away, in California, Nick’s breath catches on the inhale, shudders as he lets it go.

“What about?” he asks. He’s aiming for ingenuousness, which is pretty fucking laughable in its own right, but there’s a rough edge to his voice that means he’s absolutely into this. Griffin used to catch glimpses of it here and there, recording after long days, both too tired to stay self-contained. His body isn’t real, he’s pretty sure. He’s the same thing as the air, as the lightless corners of his bedroom. He’s nothing but focus. There is a point to this, a knife he’s waiting to slide quietly and lethally home.

Griffin snorts, contemptuous. He can almost hear Nick flinch. “ _What about._ Do you think you’re being cute, Nick? You fucking know what you’re doing.”

“Mm.” He hears Nick shift -- he pictures it, Nick sprawled out in boxers on the mattress, sheets kicked half-off the bed. Nick stretching out his back, arching up like Griffin’s in the room to see it. He lets himself palm his dick through his shorts, just once, just enough. “So what’s that? What am I doing?”

He doesn’t know when his jaw clenched up this tight. He breathes out through his teeth, closes his eyes. “The same thing you always do, I guess,” he says, light, brisk. Unaffected. He doesn’t care, and when he does care, it’s only enough to be annoyed. He’s roleplaying a person who grieved and moved on, the way he was supposed to; that’s the fantasy, the only one that matters. “Even if you _were_ this fucking stupid, you gotta know it doesn’t work, right? Like, you don’t believe anyone _goes_ for this soft-focus dumbass bit. It’s just -- it’s _real_ tired, Nicolas. It’s like you don’t care enough to try.”

Maybe he’s hearing things, but he could swear -- Nick’s hands ball into fists, fingernails catching on the fitted sheet. His own heartbeat pounds like a bassline in his head.

“You think you’re gonna get shit for playing dumb?” he asks. Presses. He wants to leave bruises; the thought hits him like a fucking train, and he smothers it with a laugh that’s only just sharp enough. He’s as hard as he’s ever been. He slips his waistband just low enough to free his dick from his shorts, and he thinks about marks on Nick’s hips, on his thighs. Dark blotches on his skin where Griffin put his hands. “You’re lazy, Nick. You just don’t wanna try.”

More sounds, movement at the other end of the line. Griffin licks a long, flat stripe across the palm of his hand -- his skin tastes like sweat and heat. “I want,” says Nick, and hesitates, and Griffin drinks in that instant of silence like it’s wine. “What do you want, Griffin, what am I supposed to do? I’ll do it, just fucking--”

“Are you jerking off?” he asks, cutting clean across the end of the sentence. “No, don’t answer that. I know you are. I know you can’t help yourself. Talk to me, Nick. Or are you tired of running your mouth?”

“Yeah,” says Nick, and then, “no, no, I can talk, I wanna -- yes, I’m jerking off.” Satisfaction burns low and insistent in Griffin’s chest. He wraps his hand around his dick and sets a slow, steady pace; the friction’s almost too much, just barely the right kind of painful. “I just wanna listen to you. You’re… it’s your voice, Griffin, fuck, I missed hearing you tell me how big of a fucking idiot I am--”

It’s embarrassing how quickly this is going to be over. There’s a near-unbearable heat between his muscles and his skin, an awful fever building. “You’re not even listening, huh,” he says, and he can hear the wanting in his voice, a string pulled tight and ready to snap. “Jesus, Nick. Don’t _bullshit_ me. You’re not an idiot.” He can barely hear what Nick’s doing anymore. There’s a ringing in his ears, an alarm he’s learned too well to ignore. “You might be easier to tolerate if you were, but you’re not. You’re just -- _fuck--”_

“Yeah?” asks Nick, and his voice is broken open, nothing but raw nerves.

“You’re just an asshole,” says Griffin, and in California, he hears Nick fall apart.

Every moment is harder to live in than the last. His own come cools too quickly on his skin; his hair sticks to his forehead, damp and ugly with sweat. “Griffin,” says Nick, only barely more human than before, and Griffin’s hands are tight in the grip of emotion; they’re aching with it. His body is sticking to the sheets. The room is going to suffocate him any moment now.

“Cut it out,” he snaps, and sits up. Nick’s photo on the screen of his phone doesn’t help; it’s old now, not the same person as the guy on the line. He’s posing in his pastel jacket in the sun, in another lifetime where he’s exactly who he always pretended to be. “We’re done. Okay?”

“Okay,” says Nick. “Jesus. No need to be so touchy about it.” He sounds like he wants to be laughing. He might as well have laughed -- Griffin feels gross enough, ugly and ungainly with his sweat staining the sheets.

It takes a moment for his phone to fall asleep, when the call is over. The room is very dark without Nick, without the photo, without that threadbare light.

…

“I lost touch with a close friend last year,” says Justin, which is what gets Griffin’s hackles up first. “I’m pretty sure we’re both trying to move on, except I have a t-shirt with him on it, and it is _the_ most comfortable shirt that I own. I know it’s important to let go, but I don’t wanna give up this extremely good shirt, because no kidding, I sleep in it most nights. Brothers, what should I do? Do I keep the shirt, or let it go, and hope I find a replacement shirt that’s even half as good to wear? And that’s from Bedtime Boy in the Bay Area. Now, uh, I think we all know what we need to talk about here, which is--”

“Which is what the _fuck_ ,” Travis says -- yells, jumping up in volume and pitch at the same time. Griffin can’t breathe. He’s on the carpet in his old place, suddenly, mic on the floor right by his face, headphone pressing into his cheek as he closes his eyes. His limbs are heavy, his thoughts sleepy and slow; the voice in his ears can barely finish a sentence. He knows exactly what the t-shirt is. There’s a photo of it saved to his phone. “What is this dude doing with a _t-shirt of his friend?_ ”

“Well, yes and no, Travis,” Justin continues, maybe half a minute away from bursting out laughing. Griffin’s pretty sure his legs have stopped existing. He wouldn’t. Nick wouldn’t submit a question to the goddamn podcast. It has to be a coincidence; it can’t be for real. “I mean, obviously that’s a pretty major question that we’re gonna -- we’re gonna have to get to, for sure. But let’s not get hung up on the… the shirt itself, okay? Because we also, like -- I cannot _tell_ you how bad I need to know what this shirt looks like. ‘A t-shirt with my buddy on it’ is _nothing_ , Bedtime Boy! Are we talking a headshot? Are we talking a full body situation?” Travis is completely losing it. It’s too hard, it’s too much to parse what Justin’s saying. “Something candid? Is this a goof shirt? Is this a fuckin’ -- is there a legitimate clothing _brand_ selling shirts featuring your friend? Like, what’s -- what is happening here, my dude?”

Travis is laughing so hard he’s coughing. Justin’s quiet, expectant, waiting for one of them to pick up the thread he left hanging. Griffin has never been so thankful that they don’t record on a video call.

“Is this bachelor party memorabilia, maybe?” he tries. His voice doesn’t feel like it’s coming out of his mouth; he’s hearing it in his headphones, more than he’s hearing it in his own body. “Or, like, the friend’s in a band? I’m just saying, people’s faces get on t-shirts for all kinds of reasons.”

“Okay,” concedes Justin, “sure. Comedy gold there, Ditto” -- and Griffin feels his face turn into a fucking heat lamp, his skin all but thrumming with all the blood that just rushed to his head.

“What _is_ funny,” says Travis, still sounding kind of hysterical, “is a shirt that just has, like -- the _shittiest_ drunk pic of your buddy, full-body, red-eye set to _yes,_ blur set to _hell yes_ \--”

“And here’s the best part,” Justin declares, “is that you made it yourself, at home, because you took it to the custom t-shirt place and even the fuckin’ -- even the guy who runs a custom t-shirt place, who _literally_ wears a shirt that says he doesn’t need Google because his wife knows everything, thought it was weird to make a drunk bro memorial shirt.”

“Are you not on board with this one, Ditto?” asks Travis, no preamble. It’s a physical effort to drag himself back into the moment, back into his body and the bit. Pulling himself together gets harder every time. “No comment to make on the shirt mystery?”

Griffin breathes in.

“I mean, I _commented_ ,” he replies, draws the word out long and slow. He’s a professional. He keeps a mask in his back pocket for this exact situation. “But apparently it wasn’t _silly_ enough for Justin. Apparently it’s a podcasting sin to think _critically_ about this true crime t-shirt situation.”

“On our comedy podcast!” Justin protests. “You gotta lean into the bit, Griffin!”

“Oh, okay,” he says. “Uh, let’s see. People look dumb in photos sometimes! Drunk people? Fuckin’ -- laughs for days, boys, good job! And oh, man, what if his _donger_ was in the shot? The McElroy brothers change the comedy game just one more time! You all used to have _standards_.”

Travis, at least, is giggling. One out of two isn’t the worst he’s ever done.

_Submitting a question to my podcast is a cheap fucking shot, Nicolas,_ he types, when the call’s over and his breath is properly situated in his lungs, and hits send before he can regret it. He leans back in his seat. The adrenaline’s finally starting to ebb; his hands are unsteady, his mouth dry. He fell down the stairs, once, when he was just a little kid. Got right back up and followed Travis to school like nothing happened, and it wasn’t until he’d made it to class that he started to feel it hurt.

Nick’s reply is immediate. It’s not even a word. It’s just a single question mark: _?_

Griffin’s stomach twists. It hits like a tidal wave, an awful, suffocating rush of humiliation: what if it wasn’t Nick? What if it was just some other San Francisco shithead with a bachelor party memorabilia shirt, something someone normal could plausibly have in his closet? He said it himself on the goddamn call, and yet he still took the question directly to Nick the second he could; of course he did. Of course he let it get to him. He does very little else anymore.

_whatever,_ says Nick, and Griffin’s phone buzzes gently in his hands. _same time tonight?_ Eyes emoji, eggplant emoji, sparkle emoji. Griffin drags a deep breath into his lungs, releases it only slowly. It doesn’t matter whether or not Nick sent the question. Even Nick doesn’t care enough to follow it through.

_Fine,_ he answers. _I’ll call you._ No emoji. Nothing but the bare bones, or one of them or both of them will get the wrong idea.

…

“I built in an extra day once we get to Vancouver,” says Travis, and the screenshare flickers over to a separate tab -- plane tickets, with a hotel booking attached. He’s the only one of them who actually enjoys planning this stuff. More than that, he’s the only one with his own assistant, which Griffin figures has got to help. “Like, that’s a border crossing right after two shows. We’re gonna be wiped out. It’ll mean we’re back at home a day later, but Sydnee and Teresa were both cool, and Griffin, you don’t have anywhere you need to be, right?”

It’s going to stop feeling miserable that he’s the only one with nobody else to factor in. One day.

“I mean,” he says, instead. “My bed? For sleeping? And it’s gonna make a pretty dangerous enemy out of my cat.” It’s not. The Plantes love hanging out with Cecil. “But other than that, sure, I’m good to go.”

“Gotta love that bachelor lifestyle,” says Justin, wry. There’s dust everywhere, cast into merciless relief by the sunlight streaming in. Griffin just rolls his eyes.

“So flights permitting, it ought to be pretty straightforward,” Travis concludes, and scrolls up to the top of his travel plan. It’s colour-coded according to brother. Clearly he hired a good assistant. “Get into San Francisco on Thursday night, show on Friday, fly up to Seattle on Saturday morning, Vancouver on Sunday, and then we get Monday to catch our breath before we head home. I’m gonna send you both your tickets so you can do what you gotta do -- I booked seats already for the flights we’re taking together, but you’re on your own for the others.”

“Where are we staying in San Francisco?” Griffin asks, light and breezy as a fucking spring morning. “I was gonna get into some shit on that Friday, if we’re central enough. Just get real buck-wild in the Castro, or… wherever the party’s at. Wherever the _influencers_ are at, you know?”

Travis wiggles the pointer of his mouse right next to the San Francisco section of his plan. “You’re not gonna get anywhere with the influencers if you can’t read, Ditto,” he says. “It’s right near City Hall. The party’s, like, three blocks away, and the address is, uh, _right there_ , which you would know if you hadn’t been sleeping through my whole presentation.”

It’s kind of a hike, he thinks, though his memory of the city is sort of hazy by now. At least one tram ride, maybe more. But Nick’s place is reachable, at least; he could, if he wanted to. Whatever it would get him. “Sorry, Trav,” he says, only halfway concentrating; if he has all of Friday before the show, he could do it, no problem. Logistically, it’d be totally fine. “You know how us millennials are. No sense of, uh. No sense of get-up-and-go.”

Logistically, sure, no problem. There’s literally no other respect in which this isn’t a terrible plan. Justin doesn’t comment, lets Travis play along with the bit; Griffin’s heart doesn’t stop trying to break out of his chest until long after they’ve ended the call.

He gets maybe half an hour into editing next week’s episode -- slow, clumsy, distracted enough that he can’t seem to stop fucking up -- before he grabs his phone, opens up iMessage. _Hey juice please do not ask questions about this,_ he types, and thank God for autocorrect because his hands have definitely stopped listening to instructions, _but also please remind me that Nick Robinson is a really bad idea?_

Justin’s guessed. It’s fifty-fifty with Travis, who ricochets back and forth between blithely oblivious and evisceratingly astute, but Justin consistently and reliably picks up on everything he’s not meant to find out. It’s like he’s tuned into a classified frequency, always quietly listening in. The fact that he’s kept quiet about it is a dead giveaway; if he thought it didn’t matter, he would’ve turned it into a joke. Griffin breathes out hard through his teeth, and hits _send_. 

The little ellipsis leaps into life at the corner of the screen, almost at once. _Yeah, he’s not a great idea for sure,_ says Justin. Griffin’s body is too small to contain everything inside it -- heart and lungs and guts all crammed in and choking each other out. Another text, hot on the heels of the first: _Look after yourself, Ditto. I’m here if you need me._

The ticket confirmation is sitting in his inbox, counting the minutes until what’s almost guaranteed to be a terrible mistake. He feels it like it’s sitting on his chest. _Thanks,_ he says to Justin, and _Love you,_ and _Awful squad tomorrow 3pm, don’t forget._

…

“You’re late,” says Nick, as soon as the call connects. It’s dark even on the west coast; Griffin’s tired, irritated, too much work and not enough time. Hard to get out of that mindset when he’s still at his desk, headphones on. Nick’s a ghost in the glare of his monitors, washed out almost completely. Still, for all the monotone, Griffin knows him well enough to catch the amusement in his eyes.

“You’re not worth my time,” he says, without missing a beat. Nick bites his lip, traps it there between his teeth.

They never used to record with video. Griffin gets way too hung up on his dumb face in the corner of the picture, and Nick -- even now, Nick can’t fucking stop seducing the camera. It got distracting, back then. Now all it does is focus him up, the kind of anger that’s hot like a laser sight. “Bet you couldn’t fuckin’ sit still,” he says, and watches Nick shiver in his seat. “Waiting for me. Getting your angles _just_ right. It’s not working, by the way,” he adds. “Your lighting’s garbage, Nick.”

Nick rolls his eyes. “Right. Because you’re working with some Hollywood studio shit over there.”

“I told you,” says Griffin, steady. Precise. “You don’t _warrant_ that shit. You think I’m gonna sink that kind of effort into this? Gonna rig up the office real nice for some late-night camera work? I can cut my video right now if you’re gonna be shitty about it.”

“Griffin,” says Nick, and his inflection says _be reasonable._ Griffin raises his eyebrows, and in two quick clicks, calls his bluff.

“You ready to focus now?” he asks. Nick looks genuinely startled on the screen, glancing around the monitor for a way to bring Griffin back. “I’m not fucking around, Nicolas. I don’t need you to be able to see me, if it’s gonna present a distraction.”

Nick breathes out hard through his teeth. He’s less put-together, now he can’t see Griffin; he’s fidgeting, rubbing the back of his neck, not quite sure where to look. There’s something satisfying about it, watching him try to find his balance. Watching him fail. “Fuckin’ -- fine,” he says, at last. “Okay. I’m listening, Griffin, you got me, just -- tell me what you wanna see.”

Griffin hums, quiet and approving, into the mic. He sees the exact moment it lands in Nick’s headphones, in a gratifying little shiver that a less quality webcam would miss. “You’re gonna take yourself apart for me, Nick,” he says, and Nick’s lips part, just a little. “Slow. You hear me? You get off before I say the word and you’re gonna regret it. Open your shirt.” Nick’s hands are on his top button almost before Griffin’s finished the sentence. He wore a button-down. Nick doesn’t wear button-downs. The realisation strikes in his hands, first, in the way they ache for wanting something they can’t hold close: Nick wore a button-down so he wouldn’t have to take off his headphones. So he wouldn’t have to miss a single moment.

“Don’t take it off,” says Griffin. “Just open. That’s it.”

“You’re such an asshole,” Nick mumbles, but there’s no heart in it. He visibly hesitates at the hem of his shirt, flushed all down his neck -- there is no part of his body that isn’t broadcasting how badly he wants to touch his dick. “Wanna see you.”

“Hands where I can see them,” Griffin says, and Nick rolls his eyes, but he holds up his hands nonetheless. He’s so pale, catching the light of his own screen and getting pretty near to reflecting it outright. But the hair on his chest is a fine, dark crosshatch that makes Griffin’s fingertips prickle with want, and the colour in his cheeks is louder than his token attempts at seeming not to care. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. Play with your nipples, if you wanna play with something.”

Nick does as he’s told almost embarrassingly quickly, eyes fluttering shut as he leans up into his own touch. Griffin’s hands ball up into fists. He can hear Nick’s breathing catch with every press of his fingertips on sensitive skin -- completely fucking shameless, like he’s forgotten Griffin’s there. “Good,” Griffin murmurs, by way of a reminder, and Nick makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat. “Slow. I’m gonna stop you if you rush.”

“You really wanna drag this out?” Nick asks, breathless. He doesn’t open his eyes.

“I wanna watch you lose it,” says Griffin. He means it. It catches him off-guard, how much he means it.

It’s the aftermath, in the end, that’s the strangest part. With his heart racing, still shaking through the aftershocks, Griffin watches Nick slump back in his chair, eyes shut and hair untidy and every breath he takes coming right through on the mic. It’s so fucking unfair that he can look this good so soon after -- half-out of his shirt, jeans and boxers shoved just low enough, thighs striped with scratches that he put there himself. Just a few weeks, and he could be there. He could have this, in the flesh, if he wanted -- but even as he thinks it, he knows there’s no _if_. There hasn’t been for a while.

“You did good,” he hears himself say, for want of _anything_ to say while Nick’s laboured breathing starts to settle down. “You okay, dude? Can I…?”

Nick laughs, weak and shaky, and cracks open his eyes. “You gonna get me a glass of water? A paper towel? Griffin.”

“You live in San Francisco,” he protests, not even remotely indignant enough. He’s light-headed, his thoughts all fizzing like soda bubbles. “I could fuckin’... Uber Eats some water at you. I could fly it out with a drone. That’s what they’re for, right?”

“Little… helicopters,” Nick agrees. “For all your local snack needs. Is this -- what is this, Griff? You don’t… I mean, are you not gonna hang up?”

Griffin glances at the button, blaring red at the bottom of the screen. He should. The whole point of this is that he should.

“I’m not saying do it,” says Nick, all but tripping over himself to get the words out. All that lassitude is gone in a moment; he’s straightening up in his seat, leaning in closer to the screen. “Fuck, no, don’t -- you don’t have to do that. I’m… man. Griffin. Are we done with the bit? The whole… the bit where you’re mad and you don’t wanna stick around after. Is that done?”

It’s like a bucket of ice water getting dumped on his head. Like the ice bucket thing. All at once everything’s numb, and everything’s focused like a sniper’s scope. “The bit,” he repeats, careful, careful. “Nick. I _am_ mad at you.”

It happens to Nick, too. Slow-motion, right there on screen, like he’s watching a killcam replay. That breathless, thoughtless vulnerability withers and dies and slams the lid of its own fucking coffin. “But,” says Nick, and he pauses, regroups, tries again. “No. You’re mad at -- what I did. And that’s fair, I’ll own it, but you’re not mad at _me_. You wanna be here. You _like_ this, Griffin. And I was fine with you being an asshole about it, too, because I thought you were doing it on purpose? I thought it was fuckin’... getting you going, or something. But you think that’s all this is? Like, is that…?”

The sentence dies on his tongue. Griffin’s chest is a deadlocked safe; he can barely breathe, much less speak. He can hardly even think past Nick’s eyes, the way they’ve shuttered themselves and closed him out after weeks on end of pleading _come inside_.

“You keep coming back, dude,” says Nick, and for all he still sounds fucked-out and breathless, there’s a dark undercurrent of bitter exhaustion that stops Griffin’s heart. “That’s you. You can say whatever you want about me, Griffin. I figure that’s the fuckin’ -- price of admission here. Like, I probably deserve it anyway. But I’m not gonna listen to you act like you’re above what we’re doing. Because it’s us. Okay? It’s not just me, and I’m sick of being the scapegoat for your shit.”

The office carpet falls away beneath him. He opens his mouth, but the words aren’t there; he doesn’t know what they should be. There’s just feeling, too much of it, jumbled together and suffocating him. The outer reaches of his body burn hot with -- what? Anger? Shame?

“Fucking _talk_ to me,” Nick says, and his voice _cracks_. Griffin watches his throat work as he swallows, watches him physically wrench himself back under control. “Don’t just -- don’t just go, you don’t get to just go again--”

It has to be anger. It can’t be anything else -- there’s a whole world beyond their blue-lit screens in the dark, and it needs him to be angry, or it will end.

“We’re done,” he says, and the words fall heavy out of his mouth, barely recognisable as his. He watches Nick’s eyes close, watches his shoulders slump and then slowly, deliberately draw themselves tighter than before. “You’re right. I’ve been -- irresponsible, and I’m sorry for that, if it -- if it’s made things difficult for you. This stops here. I’ll do better. I… fuck. Nick. I hope you can do better, too. I mean that.”

“Fuck you,” says Nick. There’s anger in it, but not enough; the rest is flat, lifeless. He’s ended the call before Griffin can open his mouth.

Griffin shuts his eyes. The glare of the monitor lingers in silhouette, tattooed onto his mind. The inventory he takes of the situation is bleak. There’s come streaked across his belly, spattered onto his jeans. The pads of his headphones are slick with sweat, pressing insistent against his ears. He’s sweaty and shaky and _tired_ \-- it’s taken him way too long to register how late it’s getting, how long the day’s been. And he’s alone. Like before, like always, he’s alone.

With his clean hand, he quits out of Skype and he shuts the computer down. It doesn’t help. Without the screen he’s just some asshole in his office in the dark, the threat of the morning hanging over him like a guillotine blade.

Griffin cleans away the evidence quickly, quietly, before he retreats.


	3. 3

It comes and goes. The problem is that he’s formed the habit, now. Giving up on Nick the first time around was unspeakably miserable, too public and too sudden and too painful, but making it happen again? He can’t check his phone without feeling the loss of their almost-constant back-and-forth. He can’t make evening plans without tripping over the standing appointment they haven’t been keeping all week. He was getting better all the time, before. He was learning how to live with the absence -- not well, not quickly, but he was learning. It mattered, that he was trying his best.

Griffin closes out of Slack, out of Audacity; he glances sideways at his coffee, long since gone cold. He doesn’t want to try anymore.

Pat’s been texting him since Tuesday, trying to pin him down on specifics. Apparently he sounded extra grouchy on the stream, which doesn’t surprise him, but which kind of doesn’t do _anything_ to him, either. It’s just a fact. Impossible to get mad at himself for it, or worry that he’s lost his groove with the Polygon team for good. He’s tired, more than he’s sad; he’s too tired to feel anything much. _We’re worried about you,_ Pat says; and _are you planning to come out to new york any time soon?_ ; and _it’s been a rough year for all of us, you’re not alone._ He feels like such a shitty little kid even thinking it, but it’s true, it’s another fact: he is alone, he’s all by himself with this unspeakable thing, without even his co-conspirator to carry the weight of it with him.

_I’m okay,_ he texts back, days later. _Lot of irons in the fire right now -- sorry to take it out on y’all._ It tracks, and he knows it. They’re flying out west in a matter of days, San Francisco and Seattle and a hop across the border to Vancouver. Pat still doesn’t dignify the lie with a response.

He doesn’t want to try anymore. He has Nick’s address, and he knows it hasn’t changed. He spends the last hour of the flight out making a list of pros and cons in his head, listening to the kid three rows behind him sing an off-key rendition of the song from _Frozen_. Pro: he’s been an asshole, and he could apologise if he went. Con: he’s been an asshole, and Nick probably won’t want to see him. Pro: Nick’s _right,_ and that’s the really shitty thing about it; he’s been trying to act like it’s all retaliation, nothing but a slightly unorthodox route to a _really_ unorthodox kind of punishment, but the past week has been proof enough that he needs this more than he’d like. Con: he can’t need this. Con: he’d get fucking disembowelled by everyone in his audience, and he’d deserve it. _Let it go,_ the kid yells, and he cringes in on himself in his seat. _Let it go!_ Everything’s a fucking sign. Pro: he hears _let it go_ and all he can think is _I can’t_.

He meets Justin and Travis at the hotel, the last of the three of them to land. It’s small -- cosy -- but then it’s fucking San Francisco; _cosy_ already costs way more than it should. “It’s really good to see you, Ditto,” announces Travis, once the initial round of hugs and travel commiserations is over. Griffin’s halfway through an overpriced beer, starting to feel his shoulders come down from around his ears. “You seemed kind of out of it lately -- it’s good to see you’re still my brother, not a pod person.”

“A podcast pod person,” he says, absently, before the substance of what Travis is saying sinks in. “I mean, thanks for that pre-show confidence boost, Travis. I was starting to worry this one might not be a fuckin’ -- relentless anxiety nightmare.”

Travis nearly spills his beer trying to backtrack. “No, no, not like that -- you didn’t stop being funny!”

“Never have, never will,” he declares, just buzzed enough that he doesn’t feel like a massive jag. “Griffin ‘King Jokes’ McElroy will _never_ relinquish his crown.” Con: he doesn’t want to be a massive jag, not for anything, not even for Nick.

Justin catches up to him in the hallway, before they retreat to bed. “Hey,” he says, quiet, and they are _both_ too drunk to have anything resembling this conversation. The stairwell kind of smells like weed -- or maybe it’s just his imagination. Maybe his subconscious would really just rather be high right now. “Don’t look so nervous, Ditto, I’m not gonna... you already got the birds and the bees talk, I’m not fuckin’ going through that again.”

Con: Justin will never let him live this down. Griffin scrubs his face with his hands, tries to get the muscles to do what they should.

“Just do what you gotta do,” says Justin, and fumbles in his pocket for his keycard. “Okay? Tell me literally nothing about any of it, but if you… ugh. Whatever you get up to while we’re here, you’re my brother and I love you. And I will go right to the courthouse and sign whatever paperwork I need to sign to emancipate myself from being related to you if you’re late tomorrow night.”

And just like that, he’s swiping the card to unlock his room. Griffin’s dazed, overloaded from the travel and the beers the two of them kept passing his way. “Thanks,” he says, too slow. Pro: perhaps at least some of the people who matter will forgive him. “I’ll, uh. I’ll be there.”

The weight of the beer on his stomach is merciful: he falls asleep quickly, and doesn’t dream.

…

He crashed here once, maybe a year and a half ago now. It was GDC, and he was on his way back from a west coast live show, and it seemed stupid to burn money on a hotel when Nick was right there and offering his couch. They blew off some exclusive party to hide out in Nick’s room and play Mario Kart, drink the shitty beer Nick bought for the occasion, like dumbass college kids with nowhere to be the next morning. Griffin didn’t touch him. Griffin didn’t even let himself imagine.

He takes a breath, and buzzes up to Nick’s apartment.

For a moment, there’s nothing. The sounds of traffic, of the streetcar passing a block away; a quiet hum of chatter from the park. Maybe he’s not home, Griffin thinks, and scuffs his sneaker on the sidewalk, willing himself to wait just a moment longer. And it’s worth it, for once, it’s worth the wait -- the speaker crackles to life, and through a thin layer of static he hears Nick say “Hey, who’s this?”

“It’s me,” he says, and catches himself a second too late. “Uh. Griffin. It’s Griffin. Are you… is this a good time?”

He could swear he hears Nick’s breath hitch. It’s probably the static. It’s probably just the line.

“Yeah,” says Nick, “uh, yeah, sure, I’ll -- let me just--”

The door clicks open. Griffin steps across the threshold, and pulls it carefully shut behind him.

Nick’s waiting for him on the top floor landing, standing in his apartment doorway like he’s waiting for someone to invite him out. The stairwell isn’t well-lit, exactly; he’s caught between the faint light from the door to the street and the brighter light from the windows behind him, shadows breaking up the familiar lines of his face. He’s less substantial than he was. Griffin steadies himself on the banister, and climbs, one foot in front of the other, over and over again. He’s almost gone past anxiety, by now. There’s nothing to him but fixed, unbending purpose, and a kind of focus that almost hurts to feel. He reaches the landing, looks up, tries to meet Nick’s eyes. He barely manages a second before Nick ducks his head, running a hand through the length of his hair. Longer than it used to be. His shirt -- his fucking shirt says _no problem fun._

“Didn’t wanna write in about that one?” Griffin asks, before he can bite the question back.

Nick huffs out a breath that’s nothing like a laugh. “Yeah, because your brother was gonna just -- throw you a question about our stupid podcast joke. Give me a _little_ credit.”

“But you did write the question,” he presses. They’re not even in the apartment. He shouldn’t be doing this here. He’s already way past the point of _shouldn’t be doing this_ , all things considered. “The shirt question. Fuckin’... _Bedtime Boy,_ Nick?”

“Listen,” Nick says -- snaps, the way he snaps when he’s on the back foot. “The only reason you even heard from me was that goddamn reminder, okay? From the podcast? It was in my phone, because apparently if you summon one Siri you get the whole fuckin’ Siri hivemind in the mix, and it was in your phone as well, and -- I know you, Griffin. Whatever you wanna think. You wouldn’t have given a shit about anyof it, you wouldn’t even have noticed, if you weren’t thinking about me already.” And _now_ he looks Griffin in the eye. “If you weren’t thinking about us. Tell me I’m wrong.”

He wants to say _there wasn’t an ‘us.’_ He wants to grab Nick’s shoulders and shake him until that self-assuredness cracks and falls to the ground. “You wanna invite me in?” he asks instead. He’s trying for composure. He’s not remotely sure what Nick is hearing. “Or are we doing this out here?”

It takes Nick a second to look away, to turn towards the apartment and start back inside. “Fine,” he says, flat, and Griffin follows him inside, closes yet another door. It looks how he remembers it. Off-white walls, high ceilings. It’s messier, for sure. Of course Nick cleaned the place up before, when he knew he’d have company staying the night.

He looks like shit. The clearer, cleaner light in the apartment isn’t kind to him, particularly. His fade’s overgrown enough to be sticking out at angles, just a bit; there are dark smudges under his eyes, a hardness and hollowness to his cheeks that wasn’t nearly so obvious on their video call. More than that, he looks unhappy. He paces across the room to the window, turns on his heel, starts toward the couch; all the while, he’s biting his lip, worrying it hard between his teeth. “What’re you doing here, Griffin?” he asks, at last. He only barely manages to stand still.

“We’re playing a live show,” Griffin says. He stays by the door, arms crossed. If he doesn’t move, then he won’t do anything stupid; there won’t be anything to regret. “It seemed kind of shitty to be in town and not… I mean. I will admit that I should’ve messaged you first.”

“Don’t be a dumbass,” Nick says, sharp-edged. “You know what I mean. Why did you come?”

His chest hurts. His chest isn’t supposed to hurt. The floor doesn’t feel stable beneath him; he’s anchored too deeply in his body, its balance and its gravity, its every incremental betrayal. “I don’t know,” he says. It rings hollow.

Nick -- doesn’t glare at him, not quite. There’s something in his eyes that’s hard to pin down, deeper than the anger and the anxiety that has his shoulders tight and his feet barely still. Something flat; something hungry and dark and desperate. “Come on,” he says, and Griffin’s pulse roars in his ears, a tsunami surging toward the undefended shore. “Griffin. You know.”

It’s not a decision, exactly; it’s an impulse that refuses to be ignored. Griffin crosses the room in three strides, catches Nick by the hips, pulls him hard into a kiss that’s all teeth. Nick grabs him, fingernails turned inward against Griffin’s shoulders, all but snarling against Griffin’s mouth -- there’s nothing good here, nothing gentle or forgiving, not from either one of them. Griffin’s awareness narrows down to a few perfect points: Nick’s lips chapped against his own; Nick’s hipbones sharp under his hands; Nick’s fingers clawing at his back. There’s too much to take in. He can’t think. He’s made of heat and sensation and _want,_ the kind that lives and dies and rises again with every shudder of Nick’s body against his own -- self-perpetuating, satisfied one moment and back with a vengeance the next. Nick’s here. Nick’s _real,_ not some terrible abstract threat, not a half-distorted voice with a body that Griffin dreamed up. Nick’s breath is searing hot against his lips. Nick’s grinding down onto Griffin’s thigh, gripped tight between his legs. “Fucking _own_ it, Griffin,” he whispers, through his teeth, between kisses and bites and choked-off gasps. “You’re not -- you’re not _above_ me.”

It’s meant to rile him, maybe. It works, for sure; his heart is pounding at the bars of its cage, relentless, determined. He’s pretty sure Nick didn’t mean it to ache the way it does, deeper than skin, deeper still than bone.

It’s stupid. There’s nothing to grieve; there isn’t time to grieve it. He doesn’t answer -- only drags them both over to the couch, pulls Nick onto the cushion beside him. It knocks the breath from Nick’s lungs with a cry.

“Seriously?” he asks, one hand finding its way to Nick’s shoulders, his neck, the back of his skull. His fingers twist into the length of Nick’s hair, and Nick shudders hard against him, like his whole body is feeling it. “You’re gonna convince me you’re not a complete fuckup by grinding up on my leg? It’s like you can’t help it -- you don’t know how to stop thinking with your dick.” Nick’s glaring at him, until he isn’t -- until Griffin pulls back sharply on his hair, and he makes a sound that’s cracked down the middle, his throat working as he swallows. Griffin knows that sound. He’s heard it so many times, alone in the dark with his phone on his pillow. It should wreck him. It doesn’t. It just -- _hurts_ , the way things hurt when they’re real.

He leans closer, presses his mouth to Nick’s throat. He could bite. He could leave bruises, raise marks, make Nick fucking _cry_. It’s getting harder to breathe the way he should. When he kisses Nick’s pulsepoint he tries to make it hard, make it forceful, make it something that means less and more than a kiss. All he can hear is Nick, breathless, shaking. All he can taste is the sweat on Nick’s skin.

“Griffin,” Nick manages, halfway choked. His own name reverberates against his lips. “Fuck. _Please_.”

This isn’t what he thought it would be. He doesn’t even know what he thought it would be anymore. It’s not as though he came here looking for revenge -- whatever Nick deserves, whatever he’s been telling himself to fall asleep at night.

His grip on Nick’s hair slackens, just a little. Just enough.

_I missed you,_ he thinks, and buries his face in the crook of Nick’s shoulder, kisses the skin at the neckline of his shirt. He isn’t even hard, not anymore. His whole body is knives turned inward. Nick lowers his head, breathing hard, hands slipping down Griffin’s back until they find a sort of purchase at his waist. No fingernails, no sharp edges; he’s just holding on. “Griffin,” he echoes, quieter than before. It’s barely more than a whisper. “Griffin.” As though all he wants is to say the name, and know he’s being heard. There was a kind of focus to him before, when Griffin arrived. He doesn’t know where it went -- only that he can’t shake the feeling that he broke it.

It’s harder, now he’s here, to think about _deserving._ There’s only this -- Nick’s messy, lifeless apartment; the memory of that August morning like a broken bone badly healed; the despair in his voice when he whispers Griffin’s name. A trail of destruction that led right back to Nick’s door, the way it always had to in the end.

Griffin lifts his head. “Nick,” he says, and his voice is halfway gone, but he has to; he can’t let it go. “Nick, we gotta stop.”

Nick looks up at him, pupils wide, eyes dark. He looks _wrecked._ He looks like the lightest touch would put him on the floor. Griffin takes his hands, lifts them carefully away from his body -- for a moment, Nick looks lost, like his hands on Griffin were the only thing tethering him to the world. “It’s okay,” says Griffin, though it’s the furthest thing in the world from _okay,_ and he’s pretty sure they both know it. “You didn’t -- I’m not mad. I just…” He can’t quite manage a laugh. “I can’t. I don’t wanna be mean to you, and I don’t know what else is -- I mean. I’m not feeling good about this?”

Nick’s hands fall slack into Griffin’s. It takes Griffin a moment to place the shadow of emotion that passes across his face -- recognition. For once, finally, they’re on the same page.

“God,” says Griffin, barely more than a breath. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…” He loses his thread. There are way too many ways he could finish that sentence, which in its own right is pretty fucking damning. “Do you wanna just sit for a minute? You look -- pretty rough, actually.”

He doesn’t quite laugh -- it’s a little huff of air that’s trying, at least, even if it can’t get off the ground. Nick sits back, silent, sinking into the couch cushions by degrees. He closes his eyes, lashes fluttering, not quite at his ease. There’s an awful, inescapable lump in Griffin’s throat. Nick’s so fucking pale, dark circles under his eyes and his stubble just overgrown enough to look a little untidy. He’s older, tireder. They both are, and without all that distance between them, it’s impossible not to see it. There’s no way to pretend that they aren’t both devastated.

He’s still holding Nick’s hands. He looks down at them, at the places where their fingers meet and intertwine. He wanted this, once, and the wanting was effortlessly simple.

“Nick,” says Griffin; and then “Jesus”; and then “come here.”

Nick curls in against him without hesitating -- all at once he’s _there,_ warm and solid in a way he wasn’t before, and Griffin can wrap his arms around him and keep him where he is, and it’s easy. Nothing’s been this easy in months. His hands are shaking, from the adrenaline crash or the delayed-action heartbreak or God only knows what else; he rests them flat against Nick’s back, against the nape of his neck. Nick’s breaths are hot and erratic on his shoulder. He’s done ugly, terrible things. They stick in Griffin’s throat like bones. Griffin has never wanted anyone more than this. He doesn’t know what it is that’s choking him anymore.

He wants to cry on Nick’s shoulder. He wants to promise Nick that everything’s going to be fine. He can’t, though, and he knows it won’t, so he doesn’t do anything much. He just stays where he is, steady and quiet, waiting for Nick, waiting for time to run out.

“I ruined it,” says Nick, at last. He doesn’t sound like he’s all the way anchored to the world, but he’s as sincere as Griffin’s ever heard him; he sounds the way he sounds at the end of their phone calls, cracked open and vulnerable in a way that hurts even to hear. “I fucking… I ruined everything.”

Griffin just holds onto him, helpless. “Little bit,” he says. “Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know, bud,” he says. It’s not his forgiveness to offer. Nick knows it, too; he doesn’t ask for anything more, spoken or unspoken. There’s a terrible crack running down the centre of Griffin’s heart, too deep and too wide to fix. He catches himself in the act of combing out Nick’s hair, fingers stroking slow through the length of it like they’ve always known what to do.

“You were right,” he says, weak, into the silence. The blinds flutter in the breeze, stirring up the light that’s pooled on the carpet. “What you said. I… fuck, Nick. I wanted you back so fucking bad.” But no, that’s not right, is it? His heartbeat and his breathing haven’t come so easily in forever. “Want,” he amends. “I want you. It’s not… like, it’s not a past-tense kind of thing.”

Nick is quiet for a moment, heavy against Griffin’s chest. He’s learning Griffin’s breaths, falling into their rhythm the way he always does. “Your brothers,” he says, at last. “Your brothers are gonna wonder where you went.”

“I think they know,” Griffin admits. There isn’t a single part of him that doesn’t hurt with sadness; he’d be crying like a little kid if Nick weren’t so shaken-up. He closes his eyes, doesn’t give them time to start burning. “Can we just be here a minute?” he asks. There’s something very nearly pleading in it. It’s fine; it’s not even a thing if he doesn’t look at Nick while he does it. “We can figure out the rest if you wanna -- we can do that for sure, but, like. For the moment?”

It never had to be like this. That’s what kills him. There are so many ways it could have been different -- if Griffin had been tougher, if Nick had been better, if they’d never come into each other’s lives at all. If Nick had apologised like he meant it, or Griffin had worked it out sooner -- met him a few years before, headed it off at the pass. But it’s too late now. All those parallel lives, and here they are, in a shared apartment in San Francisco, wrecked and washed up on each other’s shores. No way to fix it. Just the moment, and whatever comes next.

“Yeah,” says Nick. He’s exhausted. Griffin holds him steady and close; slowly, slowly, the tension in his shoulders starts to subside. “Sure. Okay.”


End file.
